Archive for November 8th, 1998

The following excerpts are taken from the pamphlet “The Eden Virus” written by Adam Child-Of-God five years ago in 2022.
No one imagined, when the so-called millennium swine flu began its spread around the globe in late 1999, that its impact would be as great as it was. Indeed experts paid scant attention to the uncommonly mild flu strain except to note how contagious it seemed to be. In fact, by May of the year 2000 just about every human being on the planet had been infected; many unawares. Even among the elderly and weak few deaths were recorded: a most un-momentous epidemic for the turn of the millennium.
Only as the months passed did the hidden effects of the virus become apparent as it grew clear that death rates were plummeting world-wide. In the developed countries, the only deaths recorded after August 2000 were through violence or accident. The pattern was global: no one was dying from what had before been “natural causes.” But whereas, in the Northern nations violence surfaced from the sea of other factors, in the South it was poverty and starvation which took their toll along with earthquake and hurricane and flood. The “Eden Virus,” as the press called it, promised eternal life but offered no relief from poverty.
The second effect of the virus was even slower to be seen: sterility. The mortality rate may have fallen enormously but the birth rate was down to zero. Absolutely no births were registered worldwide after the turn of 2001. Not a single child has been born since.
These simple facts, so familiar now, sent the old world into shock and the new millennium opened with the terrors of the Great Tribulation which still ache in our hearts. It is that ache, my children, which makes us, the undeserving remnant, ask again the Great Questions. The Eden Virus has made it clear that all we once did and once knew was shot through with the certainty of death and birth. All our customs have had to change. And all our values. So we have to ask and ask again.

Now that each life is irreplaceable we ask: what is the measure of its worth?

We no longer marry or are taken in marriage but we still ask: how can love live for ever?

The poor are still with us so we ask: how can we let death starve our kin?

Facing an endless span of years we ask: why do we keep on living? what is the meaning of our everlasting life?

We have found rest from the race against time so we ask: what are we to do now with our time, our talent, and our treasure?

Children of God, these are among the Great Questions of Eden. Ask them and ask again.